I just heard a voice from the past yesterday. And that voice is still very much out there.

In 1961 I was singing regularly in a coffeehouse in Seattle called "Pamir House." One Saturday morning I got a phone call from a young woman. She said her name was Alice Stuart, and she wanted to audition at Pamir House, but all she had was a baritone ukulele and she felt that might be a little thin. Would I be willing to accompany her on the guitar? I asked her what songs she wanted to do. She recited a short list of songs I was familiar with, so I said "sure, no problem." We arranged to meet at Pamir House a half-hour before it opened and do a little practicing together.

Early that evening as I sat there warming up, Alice walked in. She was about eighteen, had obviously just recently escaped from high school (in Chelan, Washington). She had a death-grip on the neck of a baritone ukulele, a huge stack of songbooks under her arm, and she was so nervous she was practically vibrating. We talked a bit, then we started running through the songs she wanted to do. Most of the songs had come from The Burl Ives Songbook and were ones I knew, so accompaniments were no problem. I think she felt as if she were about to face a firing squad, but she was absolutely determined to do it. I assured her that the audiences here were pretty friendly and there was nothing to worry about, but I'm not sure it helped.

Pamir House usually had two or three singers going at once. Mike Atwood, Jerry Murry, Sue Hall, Jim Wilhelm, Bill Sheldon, Judy Flenniken, Mike Neun, and I were regulars and we worked in various combinations. It was a fun place to sing, because we sat up there swapping songs, usually with no planned program. It was like singing in someone's living room, and the audiences enjoyed the informality and the banter between the singers. After an hour or so, when the audiences and singers were thoroughly warmed up, I introduced Alice. She perched on a high stool along with the rest of us and launched into her songs. As nervous as she had been, and still was, she brought it off beautifully. Her voice was strong, and it had a sweet, almost plaintive quality about it. Considering how shaky she'd been earlier, she really surprised me with her "presence." The audience loved her.

She became a regular (incidentally, John Timmons, who owned Pamir House, paid all of us). She retired the uke, got a guitar, and set about learning to play it. I gave her some lessons at first, some classical and a lot of folk, and we spent time working out accompaniments for various kinds of songs. She picked up a lot of Joan Baez songs initially, but not exclusively, and she began digging around in books (like Lomax and Sandburg) to expand her repertoire. After a year or so, she zeroed in on blues, and the rest is history. I can claim credit for starting her on the guitar, but what she has picked up since is very much her own. I wish I could say I taught her that, but no can do. Around 1963, she took off for California, and the next time I saw her, she was one of the featured performers at the 1964 Berkeley Folk Festival, along with Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, and others.

Alice Stuart was one of the first women to front her own band. She became a pioneer among women singer/songwriters, and Bonnie Raitt and others credit Alice with paving the way for them. Any check of her itinerary (she has a web site) shows that she is constantly busy, usually singing somewhere several nights a week. Yet, I often wonder why, when programs like Austin City Limits and such have specials on singer/songwriters and women singers in general, Alice Stuart is conspicuously absent. Perhaps it's because she spends most of her time on the West Coast, fairly close to home. Lots of folks in the East seem to be under the impression that nothing of importance happens west of the Mississippi. Well—maybe once in a while, in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Yesterday, KUOW, the local NPR affiliate played an interview with Alice Stuart. It was a re-broadcast, which I missed the first time around, so I was careful to catch it this time. The regular program, called "The Beat," is hosted by Dave Beck, a very adept musician himself (cello), and was produced at the KUOW studios here in Seattle. If anyone would like to give it a listen, their web site is HERE

The Beat runs about 53 minutes and Beck has a number of guests, so when the RealPlayer window pops up and the program starts to load, click on the slider, move it over to around 24 minutes, then wait for a moment while it loads. This is about where the interview with Alice starts. You might want to ride the volume control a bit, because when she starts to sing, it sounds like the guy in the production booth wasn't watching his levels and the volume is a bit low. It gets better as the program continues.

Alice's web site is HERE. She's got a few MP3s you can listen to and/or download.

I just think Alice Stuart should be a whole lot better known than she is.

Don Firth